http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2009/07/lovelace-and-babbage-adventurers.html

Kate Beaton isn’t the only one doing historical webcomics. London-based animator Sydney Padua is doing a series of comics about an alternate-historical Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, seemingly as a form of work-avoidance:

• The origin of Ada Lovelace
• Babbage vs The Economy, part 1, part 2, and part 3 (with special guest appearance by Isambard Kingdom Brunel)
• Ada Lovelace in The Person from Porlock
• Babbage and Lovelace vs The Client (in progress)

…and a few more strips and random illos can be found if you explore the site.

http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2009/07/greatest-privilege-of-rich.html

Novak assures us … that capitalism is not all about greed but is romantic, it involves noble sentiments of the human heart like the yearning for innovation and human creativity. “In actual capitalist practice, the love of creativity, invention, and groundbreaking enterprise are far more powerful than motives of greed,” he writes.

Someone's cribbing from a note about feudalism. There's always romance at the top of a system.

Just found what that reminded me of. I've been reading Tristram Hunt's Building Jerusalem. He says of Sir Walter Scott's feudal fantasies, "It was the close-knit society conjured up in Ivanhoe and the Waverly novels in which the romantic development of individual character stood paramount." Perhaps the greatest privilege of the rich is they can imagine any damn thing they please about how the world is.

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011416.html

Kate Beaton isn’t the only one doing historical webcomics. London-based animator Sydney Padua is doing a series of comics about an alternate-historical Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, seemingly as a form of work-avoidance:

• The origin of Ada Lovelace
• Babbage vs The Economy, part 1, part 2, and part 3 (with special guest appearance by Isambard Kingdom Brunel)
• Ada Lovelace in The Person from Porlock
• Babbage and Lovelace vs The Client (in progress)

…and a few more strips and random illos can be found if you explore the site.

Day One - Campbell to Brookings

What with the very late start, I did not have any time for sight seeing. *sigh* I would have liked to drive the Avenue of the Giants or putter around the Lost Coast. Oh well. The drive to Brookings was uneventful. Minor excitement upon getting to Brookings. My turn-off from the highway was closed! The innkeepers had failed to mention this, probably because the detour was in the next block, and fairly well marked, except for one T-intersection which required deductive reasoning to figure out.

The Chetco River Inn is indeed 18 miles off the highway. When driving out there it is best to keep track of how many bridges you've crossed and your mileage. The inn's driveway is just long enough to make you wonder what you've gotten yourself into.

The reward for going that far out into the bush is a gorgeous, quiet setting right on the river. I stayed in the main building, which is very homey and immaculately maintained. My room was on the upper floor; small but great view of the river and a large comfortable bed plus my own bathroom. This is the first place I've ever stayed that did not issue room keys (this lead to a funny situation later that night). My first action after settling in was walking by the river. The innkeepers say the Chetco is the least polluted river in Oregon. I believe it. The water was crystal clear (and cold) with clear views of the bottom. The opposite bank was solid forest.



Appetizers are served on the veranda where I met the other guests and the proprietors two spoiled Scotty dogs.



A bachelor party, but not in the traditional sense. They were a mixed gender group from a variety of cities, who were enjoying each other's company for a weekend before the groom flew off to Syria (!) and his wedding. These folks kindly shared their wine with me, which was made by a friend of theirs, and is really quite good (Stone House Winery, El Dorado County).

If you ask them a couple of days before your stay, the innkeepers will cook dinner for you. I took them up on this as the menu featured prime rib, in enormous portions. The local chickens get the leftovers. After dinner was an outdoor bonfire and good conversation. I retired early and read. A couple of hours later the bachelor party also retired, only to discover one of their members had locked himself out of his room! I fell asleep before they solved that conundrum, but no one ended up on the couch.

http://darkgate.net/comic/#boondocks

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uclick/doonesbury/~3/3OTMXQ63GPc/437626

http://whedonesque.com/comments/20950

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2009/07/dollhouse-exclusive-a-new-clip-from-epitaph-one.html

This time via Maureen Ryan's "The Watcher" blog from the Chicago Tribune.

http://whedonesque.com/comments/20949

http://www.jasonpalmer.net/SereniTees.htm

There is even a pink one! And a tank top and olive green raglan top.

http://whedonesque.com/comments/20948

http://www.megaconvention.com/view/mediaguests/

The foursome will be among the guests at the Orlando Mini MegaCon on August 22nd and 23rd.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNationWeblogs/~3/d0t2ak1Pkng/cia_s_panetta_owes_pelosi_an_admission_and_an_apology

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/450720/cia_s_panetta_owes_pelosi_an_admission_and_an_apologyhttp://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/?pid=450720

Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta owes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi an apology -- or, at the very least, a clarification.

In May, when Republicans claimed she had been briefed in 2002 by the Central Intelligence Agency about the Bush-Cheney administration's torture regimen, Pelosi said: Pelosi accused the CIA of "misleading the Congress of the United States" for years.

CIA Director Leon Panetta denied the charge in blunt language.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNationWeblogs/~3/sv6s6hXFaO4/cia_s_panetta_owes_pelosi_an_apology

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/450720/cia_s_panetta_owes_pelosi_an_apologyhttp://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/?pid=450720

Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta owes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi an apology -- or, at the very least, a clarification.

In May, when Republicans claimed she had been briefed in 2002 by the Central Intelligence Agency about the Bush-Cheney administration's torture regimen, Pelosi said: Pelosi accused the CIA of "misleading the Congress of the United States" for years.

CIA Director Leon Panetta denied the charge in blunt language.

I have just finished going through the manuscript, and made the few needed changes.

Now I have to re-paginate the scenes because of the added scene. Right now, (without the added scene,) the manuscript stands at 576 pages.

Once I've re-numbered the pages, I will print out two copies, (to start.) One is for me to read over and one is for my friend to read over.

Once I'm satisfied with the manuscript post read-through, it will be time to look for editor #3.

Then, hopefully, we can move this project forward.

current mood: productive

http://whedonesque.com/comments/20947

http://store.quantummechanix.com/Serenity--In-Flight-T-shirt-by-11th-Hour_p_73.html

There's a shiny new tshirt design featuring our favourite ship.

http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2009/07/tell-media-include-single-payer-in.html

http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2009/07/mary-in-tree-stump.html

“While we do not wish in any way to detract from devotion to Our Lady, we would also wish to avoid anything which might lead to superstition,” he said.

Blast from the past.

I was listening to an old David Cross CD of his stand-up, because the man is just so damn funny. (The disk was "Shut Up You Fucking Baby!")

He was talking about how John Ashcroft, when he was the (shudder) Attorney General, draped all the statues of Lady Justice because the statue had one bare breast.

"He just can't resist that cold stone titty."

It made me laugh (again) until I remembered that George W. Bush was in office at the time. But Bush and his cavalcade of idiots were endless fodder for comedians like David Cross.

current mood: amused

http://whedonesque.com/comments/20946

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0252230/

Everyone's favorite Operative turns thirty-five today! And it's Ron Glass' birthday too!

I wasn't entirely sure where to link for this, so the main link takes you to imdb, where I learned it was his birthday. I've also found this, though: http://www.chiwetelejiofor.net/, which may be more official. Feel free to make changes as you see fit.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNationWeblogs/~3/UGj4Ee4eLI8/talks_with_iran_by_september

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/450668/talks_with_iran_by_septemberhttp://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/?pid=450668

Let's try to sort out what happening on the front of dealing with Iran's pesky nuclear program.

In Italy, the G-8 countries took a stab at addressing the issue, but the result is, well, less than clear.

First, here's President Obama's take, from a news conference on Friday in L'Aquila:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNationWeblogs/~3/QWbQjVo9134/sarah_palin_s_elite_apologists

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/450658/sarah_palin_s_elite_apologistshttp://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/?pid=450658

I like Ross Douthat, as I've said here before, but earlier this week he wrote a justly panned column in which he claimed, absurdly, that Sarah Palin had been done in by media elites who "mocked and misrepresented" her because she didn't graduate from Columbia or Harvard. Douthat's editorial was infused with the very thing he was objecting to – classism, the condescending assumption that a woman without an Ivy League pedigree shouldn't be criticized by uppity reporters for appearing utterly clueless about, say, foreign policy, the economy, the Supreme Court etc.

The best rejoinder to Douthat's column has come from a fellow conservative, Peggy Noonan, who, in today's Wall Street Journal, points out that the elites who supposedly revile Palin actually created her (see William Kristol), and that she failed because she couldn't articulate her positions or convince anybody she was qualified to be on the national ticket of any party. Noonan also corrects the unexamined assumption at the core of Douthat's column:

She is not working class, never was, and even she, avid claimer of advantage that she is, never claimed to be and just lets others say it. Her father was a teacher and school track coach, her mother the school secretary. They were middle-class figures of respect, stability and local status. I think intellectuals call her working-class because they see the makeup, the hair, the heels and the sleds and think they're working class "tropes." Because, you know, that's what they teach in "Ways of the Working Class" at Yale and Dartmouth.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Feministing/~3/7aLXvzmcJWg/016636.html

Tori Amos talks about what she knows about men.

An interview in Guernica with Fatima Bhutto.

Sociological Images notes a price difference between black dolls and white dolls.

On how not to advertise games.

A roadside tent city of sex offenders in Miami and its surrounding controversy.

Crossposted from the Deadline Dames, where this week we’re answering reader questions. Come on over and play!

My brain is oatmeal today, because yesterday I finished the first draft of the third Strange Angels book. So if I occasionally sound like a babbling idiot, that’s why. There’s a snapback involved in finishing any huge project. This one is all the more intense because I don’t get a break–I go right into last-minute Weasel Boy revisions and short-story reworking. Come August, when everything is turned in, I am going to be so, so useless.

Last week I talked about how writing is not a bloodless art. Several of you have asked me about the “hidden hinges” I mentioned at the very beginning of that piece. (Warning: I am about to beat a metaphor to death in this post. I AM NOT KIDDING.)

Now, this is purely personal terminology, YMMV and all that. I do structure my books vary carefully and put things in certain places for a reason. I tend to visualize a book like a tapestry or a fall of cloth hanging in a certain configuration, and the external and internal hinges are the places where I’ve inserted a hook or something to get the fabric to make the shape I want. It requires both fine close work (trees) as well as stepping back to take a look at how the whole damn thing is hanging (forest.)

What I call “external” hinges are big plot points, major parts of the plot. Smaller plot points are the folds of the fabric itself. Internal, “hidden” hinges are smaller, pretty much invisible underpinnings, and they come in two types: the personal and the reader’s hinges.

This won’t make a lot of sense without an example, so here goes.

In Working For The Devil, the sex scene with Dante and Japhrimel is an external hinge. It moves the story forward and introduces the basic tension in the second half of the book, the tension that was foreshadowed both by Japh’s treatment of Dante and by Dante’s own feelings of being an alien in her own world. The reader’s hidden hinge in that scene is where Dante talks about Japhrimel telling her things she had always wanted to hear. That feeling–that you’re waiting for the lover who will whisper the right thing in your ear–is amazingly human, and it is the reader’s entry into the scene, for all it occurs near the end of it. It’s not quite a payoff, but it is a hidden hinge and part of the reason why that scene works.

The personal hinge is just that–personal. It’s the part of the scene that makes it work for the writer, and no, I’m not going to tell you what my personal hinge in that scene is. It’s not what you think.

The personal hinge is the writer’s entry into the scene–it gives the writer what the scene is “about,” it emotionally invests the writer so that the writer can make it possible for the reader to be emotionally invested. It happens in the oddest places, and most times the reader’s eyes skip right over it. I have yet to identify a hidden hinge in a fellow writer’s book, and I have yet to have anyone guess any of mine correctly–or even mention them.

This is why reading is so important for writers. You have to read widely, in a few different genres, before you start being able to identify where the outer and the reader’s hidden hinges are. Sometimes the hidden hinges are missing–try as I might, I cannot find them in a lot of big “blockbuster” books. (Clancy and Dan Brown come to mind here.) This could be because there is no emotional point of entry for me in those books personally, or it could be because they’re not there. (I will leave that question where it lies.) I can read them for other reasons, but the satisfying emotional gestalt of story is missing.

Hinges are different than worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is how you dye that fall of fabric, but without the hinges it’s just a shapeless mass. Hoisting it properly and making it hang to make the finished shape you want requires structure–both the bigger structure of external hinges and the smaller detail-oriented structure of reader’s hidden hinges.

If the external and the reader’s hidden hinges are at variance or improperly balanced, the work isn’t going to “hang” right and will feel lopsided or misshapen. External hinges without internal hinges make for a choppy mess of events with very little internal logic and no reason to care about why these characters are doing those things. Internal hinges without external hinges are very hard to do, because a story without something happening, even if that something is purely internal, is not quite a story. Sometimes the reader’s hidden hinges can double as external hinges in a story with not much “going on” on the surface, but that’s a hat trick for other writers, not me. Purely internal stories are okay, but I prefer a little more bang and flash. Again, that’s a personal taste.

I didn’t find out about internal hinges until after my sixth novel or so. Before I had a fuzzy idea why some things worked, because I’d read so much and had caught the rhythm of storytelling. But around my sixth finished book I started being able to see the structure of a whole book inside my head like a 3-D model, and I was pretty much useless and excited for a week thinking about it and applying that sight to stuff I’d already written. Which held up okay, I guess, for someone who couldn’t see what they were doing while they were building it. I’d been working blind up to that point, just doing things instinctively, and now I could finally see what I was doing.

It was awesome.

This is part of why I am so adamant that writers cannot stop at their first finished piece and just flog that one, endlessly. I may be a dolt because it took me six effing books to get the structure model inside my head, but I would never have gotten there if I was still flogging smoke and being That Writer. There are two things about novel writing that new writers largely don’t get: that it takes a phenomenal amount of sheer bloodyminded practice/hard work, and that it’s different each time. Each novel’s process is different–the shape under the cloth is unique. Understanding how to get the cloth to fall the way you want requires that you practice enough to understand how cloth behaves, to get it to do what you want.

I warned you I would beat that metaphor to death, but I think I’ll stop now while it’s on the floor begging for mercy. I don’t have the heart to finish it off today. I must be getting soft in my old age. Either that or I’m exhausted from finishing that most recent book and looking at dyeing a whole new batch of cloth…

Oh, crud. The metaphor just died. Guess I killed it after all.

Keep writing!

Posted from A Fire of Reason. You can also comment there.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNationWeblogs/~3/NmbK2QZ63yA/sarah_palin_s_elite_defenders

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/450658/sarah_palin_s_elite_defendershttp://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/?pid=450658

I like Ross Douthat, as I've said here before, but earlier this week he wrote a justly panned column in which he claimed, absurdly, that Sarah Palin had been done in by media elites who "mocked and misrepresented" her because she didn't graduate from Columbia or Harvard. Douthat's editorial was infused with the very thing he was objecting to – classism, the condescending assumption that a woman without an Ivy League pedigree shouldn't be criticized by uppity reporters for appearing utterly clueless about, say, foreign policy, the economy, the Supreme Court etc.

The best rejoinder to Douthat's column has come from a fellow conservative, Peggy Noonan, who, in today's Wall Street Journal, points out that the elites who supposedly revile Palin actually created her (see William Kristol), and that she failed because she couldn't articulate her positions or convince anybody she was qualified to be on the national ticket of any party. Noonan also corrects the unexamined assumption at the core of Douthat's column:

She is not working class, never was, and even she, avid claimer of advantage that she is, never claimed to be and just lets others say it. Her father was a teacher and school track coach, her mother the school secretary. They were middle-class figures of respect, stability and local status. I think intellectuals call her working-class because they see the makeup, the hair, the heels and the sleds and think they're working class "tropes." Because, you know, that's what they teach in "Ways of the Working Class" at Yale and Dartmouth.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNationWeblogs/~3/8YtNEKm4HHw/et_tu_br_no

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/450642/et_tu_br_nohttp://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/?pid=450642

Have you ever been at a polite dinner party and heard, in an exquisitely timed moment of silence, a loud, rasping fart erupt from one of the guests? The ensuing moment is ripe--with feeling. Oh my god, did everyone just hear that? How embarrassing!--for the offender, certainly, and, weirdly, for everyone else as well. Faces flush, molting through a welter of expressions: shock, disgust, feigned ignorance, a suppressed smirk. Finally, hopefully, someone breaks the discomfort with a cackle, and the anxiety is swept away with a hearty shared laugh.

Watching 'Brüno', the British comic Sacha Baron Cohen's latest mockumentary, is a lot like experiencing that après-fart moment, except it lasts for an excruciating ninety minutes in which the viewer is kept constantly teetering between incredulity, mortification and laughter. It is unpleasant, almost physically painful to watch and also, at times, irresistibly funny. 'Brüno' is a gas!

It is also a whole lot of ass, nipple and cock, especially cocks, which in 'Brüno' come in a variety of forms: flesh and prosthetic, soft and hard, mechanical and human. That's because 'Brüno' is, among other things, Cohen's send-up of gay male culture. Like his other alter-egos, Ali G and Borat, Brüno is an exaggeration of an already exaggerated stereotype, in this case, of a gay Austrian fame whore who, having lost his job as a fashion correspondent for the TV program "Funkyzeit," embarks on an odyssey to become "the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler."

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNationWeblogs/~3/Cmtcq0k_Nto/et_tu_br_uuml_no

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/450642/et_tu_br_uuml_nohttp://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/?pid=450642

Have you ever been at a polite dinner party and heard, in an exquisitely timed moment of silence, a loud, rasping fart erupt from one of the guests? The ensuing moment is ripe--with feeling. Oh my god, did everyone just hear that? How embarrassing!--for the offender, certainly, and, weirdly, for everyone else as well. Faces flush, molting through a welter of expressions: shock, disgust, feigned ignorance, a suppressed smirk. Finally, hopefully, someone breaks the discomfort with a cackle, and the anxiety is swept away with a hearty shared laugh.

Watching 'Brüno', the British comic Sacha Baron Cohen's latest mockumentary, is a lot like experiencing that après-fart moment, except it lasts for an excruciating ninety minutes in which the viewer is kept constantly teetering between incredulity, mortification and laughter. It is unpleasant, almost physically painful to watch and also, at times, irresistibly funny. 'Brüno' is a gas!

It is also a whole lot of ass, nipple and cock, especially cocks, which in 'Brüno' come in a variety of forms: flesh and prosthetic, soft and hard, mechanical and human. That's because 'Brüno' is, among other things, Cohen's send-up of gay male culture. Like his other alter-egos, Ali G and Borat, Brünoo is an exaggeration of an already exaggerated stereotype, in this case, of a gay Austrian fame whore who, having lost his job as a fashion correspondent for the TV program "Funkyzeit," embarks on an odyssey to become "the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler."

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Feministing/~3/oualEpwdynU/016639.html

The Women's Media Center just released this assemblage of clips showing the ridiculous treatment that Sotomayor has already experienced at the hands of right-wing pundits and the mainstream media.

Take action here so that she can get the most fair nomination hearing possible.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNationWeblogs/~3/POKnPRAfRr8/et_tu_bruno

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/450642/et_tu_brunohttp://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/?pid=450642

Have you ever been at a polite dinner party and heard, in an exquisitely timed moment of silence, a loud, rasping fart erupt from one of the guests? The ensuing moment is ripe--with feeling. Oh my god, did everyone just hear that? How embarrassing!--for the offender, certainly, and, weirdly, for everyone else as well. Faces flush, molting through a welter of expressions: shock, disgust, feigned ignorance, a suppressed smirk. Finally, hopefully, someone breaks the discomfort with a cackle, and the anxiety is swept away with a hearty shared laugh.

Watching 'Bruno', the British comic Sacha Baron Cohen's latest mockumentary, is a lot like experiencing that après-fart moment, except it lasts for an excruciating ninety minutes in which the viewer is kept constantly teetering between incredulity, mortification and laughter. It is unpleasant, almost physically painful to watch and also, at times, irresistibly funny. 'Bruno' is a gas!

It is also a whole lot of ass, nipple and cock, especially cocks, which in 'Bruno' come in a variety of forms: flesh and prosthetic, soft and hard, mechanical and human. That's because 'Bruno' is, among other things, Cohen's send-up of gay male culture. Like his other alter-egos, Ali G and Borat, Bruno is an exaggeration of an already exaggerated stereotype, in this case, of a gay Austrian fame whore who, having lost his job as a fashion correspondent for the TV program "Funkyzeit," embarks on an odyssey to become "the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler."

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Feministing/~3/cUVcpzlXLw4/016516.html

Every once in awhile, as a writer, you read a book that raises that bar in your own mind about what is possible in your profession. Enrique's Journey is such a book. In it, Pulitzer Prize winner Sonia Nazario, follows the journey of a 17-year-old boy from Honduras as he tries to make his way to America to be reunited with his mother--who left when he was a small boy to pursue the American dream. As he rides on top of trains, tries to avoid gangsters and police, begs for food, sleeps in graveyards and abandon homes, struggles with drug addiction etc., I got the most lucid, gripping portrait into the journey of the child immigrant that I've ever been exposed to.

Nazario's reporting bowled me over. Her story originated as a Los Angeles Times feature, and continued to expand from there. She's spent months retracing Enrique's journey, exhaustively reporting all of those who he met along the way, in addition to the various members of his own family. This dedication allowed her to make the journey really come alive--from the smell of the mangoes thrown onto the train by rare, generous poor folks living along the tracks to the local politics in a tiny church in Nuevo Laredo.

Enrique and his mother, Lourdes', story is not uncommon. From the book:

In Los Angeles, a University of Southern California study showed, 82 percent of live-in nannies and one in four housecleaners are mothers who still have at least one child in their home country. A Harvard University study showed that 85 percent of all immigrant children who eventually end up in the United States spend at least some time separated from a parent in the course of migrating to the United States.

I simply can't recommend this incredible book enough. Especially at this moment, when the news is filled with headlines about both immigration and Honduras, this book sheds light on the real lives being affected. Enrique's Journey not only engages your heart, but fills your mind with ideas about the power of tenacious storytelling.

http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp07102009.shtml

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Feministing/~3/UiEe8mQDGd8/016635.html

According to Burger King, women are so excited about their new sandwich they will engage in fellatio with it.

via Fox50.com

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Feministing/~3/9IqztBBx_mc/016633.html

Last week, over 60 black and Latino day campers were turned away from a swim club in Philadelphia because of complaints by white adult members of the club that, according to the club's president John Duesler, "[A] lot of kids would change the complexion ... and the atmosphere of the club."

Community blogger zp27 beat us to the punch on this story, an absolute nightmare and truly telling to the stark reality of the racism and bigotry that exists in this country. The club is of course backtracking and saying that the issue wasn't race, despite some of the kids overhearing racist complaints by the members of the club right before they were asked to leave and the club returned the $1,950 check Creative Steps Day Care had given them to use the pool.

The good news out of this is that the day care center has gotten tons of support from surrounding clubs and schools since, some who have offered their pools for the campers to use. But this doesn't change the fact that these kids, as young as five years old, have already been told that they aren't allowed to swim in a pool because of their race. It's just unreal.

Shark Fu has a great piece up at Angry Black Bitch about this, as does Melissa Harris-Lacewell at the Nation. Go read them now.

A local video on the story after the jump.

The survey found nearly 9 in 10 scientists accept the idea of evolution by natural selection, but just a third of the public does. And while 84 percent of scientists say the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, less than half of the public agrees with that.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNationWeblogs/~3/OYJGX-8hcCo/slacker_friday

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/altercation/450535/slacker_fridayhttp://www.thenation.com/blogs/altercation/?pid=450535

Wrap-up: We have a new "Think Again" column called "Conflicts by the Rich, for the Rich," here . I also did a Daily Beast post on Palin's defenders on Sunday, which is here.

And I do recommend that if you have a few minutes free, you give them over to the Samminator, here. Those were the days, huh? On to Mr. Pierce. I also recommend if you have a few minutes, try to pick up a copy of 'Rolling Stone' and read the wonderful account of the life of Mr. Gregory Allman, it is a wonderful piece of writing. It's not online and I never heard of the writer, but trust me...

This Week on Moyers:

With almost twenty years inside the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter saw for-profit insurers hijack our healthcare system and put profits before patients. Now, he speaks with Bill Moyers about how those companies are standing in the way of healthcare reform. Potter spoke out against the industry for the first time last month, testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee he said, "Recently it became abundantly clear to me that the industry's charm offensive, which is the most visible part of a duplicitous and well-financed PR and lobbying campaign, may well shape reform in a way that benefits Wall Street far more than average Americans." Wendell Potter is a senior fellow on healthcare for the nonpartisan watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy, for which he writes a blog on healthcare reform.

Charles Pierce
Newton, MA

July Thinks To Do:
- finish TRUTHSEEKER revisions
- revisions for DEMON HUNTS
- proposal for Walker Papers #6
- write “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”
- Chance graphic novel proposal
- an essay or two for the Chance GN
- getting together all the materials for that GN
» includes asking my team if they want to write essay things
» and getting color notes to Jason
» email a reminder to the team
- proposal for WAYFINDER
» messy outline completed, synopsis to follow
» actual chapters & stuff won’t be done until I get the 2nd TRUTHSEEKER revision letter, I think, ’cause that still needs work
- (rough) WORLDBREAKER pitch

I have moved:
- Marvel application
- Mia graphic novel proposal
- Walker Papers short story

to August (first half of August, I swear, Lanny), although I had previously thought I’d moved the WAYFINDER/WORLDBREAKER stuff to August. Today corrected that think.

Damn, I feel like I’m juggling hot potatoes right now. I also just agreed to write another short story (that was what prompted LAG’s comment earlier), but it’s not due until December, so that shouldn’t be difficult. Also, I think I’m well past the place where I can claim I don’t write short stories. I used to not write short stories. Now I do. :)

current mood: busy

http://whedonesque.com/comments/20945

http://www.afterellen.com/TV/2009/7/top-11-lesbian-bi-sidekicks?page=0%2C3

Our favorite red haired witch takes the number two slot in this list of go-to girls.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Feministing/~3/rp5JMjCENJY/016626.html

Damn straight! On Wednesday, an appeals court ruled that despite two Washington pharmacists' lawsuit saying that their religious beliefs should allow them to refuse to stock and provide emergency contraception to their customers, personal convictions doesn't trump a patient's right to timely medication.

This decision is huge as it could affect policy across the Western U.S. regarding the "right to conscience" nonsense that has been gaining momentum over the past few years, particularly with the help of Bush implementing the anti-choice HHS regulations before he left office (which we're still waiting for Obama to rescind like he intended). But this ruling creates a precedent for future cases around the issue.

While the pharmacists won a temporary injunction by the U.S. District Court in Seattle under their claim that they should be protected under the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals wasn't having it. They lifted the injunction, saying that a person's religious beliefs "does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability":

"Any refusal to dispense -- regardless of whether it is motivated by religion, morals, conscience, ethics, discriminatory prejudices, or personal distaste for a patient -- violates the rules."

Booya.

http://twolumps.net/d/20090710.html